Information-market system

ABSTRACT

The current application is directed to methods and systems that provide an information market in which information producers sell information, advertisers purchase consumption of advertisements, and information consumers purchase information from information producers and receive compensation from advertisers through automated and semi-automated information-market transactions. The information market provides a transaction-based marketplace for the provision and consumption of information in much the same way as various types of financial markets provide a marketplace for cost-effective exchange of goods and services. The transaction-based information market provides flexibility and control to both information providers and information consumers as well as the cost efficiency of a transaction-based information marketplace.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 13/710,105,filed Dec. 10, 2012, issued May 21, 2019, U.S. Pat. No. 10,296,947,which is a continuation-in-part to application Ser. No. 12/001,052,filed Nov. 28, 2007, abandoned.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The current application is directed to distribution of informationthrough electronic communications, including the Internet and, inparticular, methods and systems that implement an information marketthat provides for automated exchange of information and value within theinformation market.

BACKGROUND

The distribution of information has been a fundamental activity in humansocieties for many thousands of years. Up until the 1400s, informationdistribution was primarily carried out orally and through hand-writtendocuments and texts. The invention of the printing press greatlyaccelerated information distribution and information exchange. In the1800s and 1900s, development of electronic communications, including thetelegraph, telephone, and broadcast technologies, including radio andtelevision, vastly increased the capacity for information exchange andvastly decreased the cost of distributing information. Beginning in the1950s, the development of electronic computers and computer-drivenelectronic communications, including various types of high-bandwidthelectronic and optical communications media represented another leap inthe speed, capacity, and cost-effectiveness of information distribution,ultimately spawning the Internet and Internet-associated methods andsystems for distribution of a variety of different types of information,from text and graphics to streaming video, to a wide variety ofdifferent types of processor-controlled devices, including electroniclaptops, notebooks, tablets and pads, personal computers, mobile phones,and a host of other electronic devices. A modern grade school student,as one example, can currently access, through using an inexpensivepersonal computer, far more information and a greater diversity ofinformation than was available, at any price, to anyone in the 1960s and1970s.

While the sheer volume of accessible information and the speed andcost-effectiveness by which information can be accessed have increasedwith the development of the Internet and Internet-associated methods forinformation distribution and exchange, many of the current models forinformation distribution are based on decades-old broadcast-mediatechniques and paradigms, with limited cost efficiencies. Informationproviders and information consumers, as well as those who design,develop, manufacture, and sell communications systems and computers,continue to seek new methods and systems for cost-effective informationdistribution and information exchange.

SUMMARY

The current application is directed to methods and systems that providean information market in which information producers sell information,advertisers purchase consumption of advertisements, and informationconsumers purchase information from information producers and receivecompensation from advertisers through automated and semi-automatedinformation-market transactions. The information market provides atransaction-based marketplace for the provision and consumption ofinformation in much the same way as various types of financial marketsprovide a marketplace for cost-effective exchange of goods and services.The transaction-based information market provides flexibility andcontrol to both information providers and information consumers as wellas the cost efficiency of a transaction-based information marketplace.In additional implementations, individual pricing for goods and servicesmay be provided to consumers in additional types of markets, includingtraditional retail markets.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 provides a high-level architectural overview of personalcomputers, servers, and other such processor-controlledinformation-processing and communications devices and systems.

FIG. 2 illustrates typical electronic information provision andinformation consumption.

FIG. 3 illustrates a typical displayed web page through which aninformation consumer receives information.

FIG. 4 illustrates specification of a displayed web page by an HTMLfile.

FIG. 5 illustrates, using a control-flow-diagram-like illustration, theprocess by which a web browser renders a web page for display.

FIG. 6 illustrates one implementation of the electronic informationmarket disclosed in the current application.

FIG. 7 illustrates an example transaction certificate.

FIG. 8 illustrates an example of a user-preferences data structure thatis exchanged at certain times among participants of an electronicinformation market.

FIG. 9 illustrates an additional data structure that may be exchangedbetween participants and components of an information market.

FIG. 10 illustrate internal components of the aggregator-servicecomponent (614 in FIG. 6) and general operational characteristics of theaggregator-service component of an information market.

FIG. 11 illustrates an additional component of the information marketnot illustrated in FIG. 6.

FIGS. 12A-B illustrate a “new session” routine called within a webbrowser when the web browser is launched on a user's computationaldevice.

FIGS. 13A-B illustrate a “get certificate” routine called in step 1208in FIG. 12A.

FIGS. 14A-B illustrate an access transaction by which a browserparticipating in the information market accesses content on behalf of aninformation-market user.

FIG. 15 illustrates a transaction carried out between a negotiatorcomponent of the information market and an advertiser.

FIGS. 16A-D illustrate operation of the aggregator component orcomponents of an information market.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The current application is directed to methods and systems thatimplement an information market in which information providers andinformation consumers conduct information-provision andinformation-consumption transactions. The information market providessimilar efficiencies in information exchange that are provided bytraditional financial markets for the exchange of goods and services.The information market to which the current application is directed isgenerally implemented within a large variety of different types ofprocessor-controlled information-processing and communications methodsand systems, including personal computers, mobile phones, servercomputers, and many other types of devices and systems.

FIG. 1 provides a high-level architectural overview of personalcomputers, servers, and other such processor-controlledinformation-processing and communications devices and systems. Thecomputer system contains one or multiple central processing units(“CPUs”) 102-105, one or more electronic memories 108 interconnectedwith the CPUs by a CPU/memory-subsystem bus 110 or multiple busses, afirst bridge 112 that interconnects the CPU/memory-subsystem bus 110with additional busses 114 and 116, or other types of high-speedinterconnection media, including multiple, high-speed serialinterconnects. These busses or serial interconnections, in turn, connectthe CPUs and memory with specialized processors, such as a graphicsprocessor 118, and with one or more additional bridges 120, which areinterconnected with high-speed serial links or with multiple controllers122-127, such as controller 127, that provide access to variousdifferent types of mass-storage devices 128, electronic displays, inputdevices, and other such components, subcomponents, and computationalresources.

FIG. 2 illustrates typical electronic information provision andinformation consumption. In FIG. 2, a web page 202 is displayed on thedisplay device 204 of a personal computer 206. The web page generallycontains a variety of different types of information, including text,photographs and graphics, animations, and even streaming video. Thedisplayed web page 202 is generated by a web-browser application 208that executes within an execution environment provided by an operatingsystem 210 executing on a processor or processors within the personalcomputer 206. The information used by the web browser to generate thedisplayed web page is obtained by the web browser from generally remotecomputational entities using the hypertext transfer protocol (“HTTP”),the real-time streaming protocol (“RTSP”), and other suchinformation-transfer protocols that are generally implemented above thewell-known transmission control protocol (“TCP”) and Internet protocol(“IP”). In the HTTP protocol, commonly used for providing theinformation from which displayed web pages are generated by webbrowsers, the web browser accesses information by specifying a universalresource locator (“URL”) or, more generally, a universal resourceidentifier (“URT”), for each discrete information entity, such as afile, in an HTTP GET request to a remote server 212 interconnected withthe web browser via the Internet 214 and receives the requested file orother information entity from the remote server according to theclient/server HTTP protocol. The RTSP protocol is used to request andreceive streaming video for display through a media-player applicationprogram that executes in parallel with the web browser. The RTSPprotocol allows the rendering and display of a video to commence priorto the completion of transfer of the corresponding video file from aremote video-data source to the media player, with the video renderedand displayed as video data streams over the Internet from the remotevideo-data source to the media player on a user's computer or othervideo-rendering device.

FIG. 3 illustrates a typical displayed web page through which aninformation consumer receives information. The displayed web page 302may be displayed over the entire display screen, as in FIG. 3, or over awindow that represents a portion of the display screen. The displayedweb page may include multiple subregions, including, in the web pageshown in FIG. 3, multiple regions 304-309 in which advertisements aredisplayed, a main region in which content is rendered and displayed tothe user 310, and a video-display region 312 in which a user can view astreaming video, such as a film or television program with embeddedvideo advertising.

FIG. 4 illustrates specification of a displayed web page by an HTMLfile. In many cases, web pages are specified and described by hypertextmarkup language (“HTML”) files. FIG. 4 shows a high-level representationof an HTML file 402 that specifies the web page 302 discussed above withreference to FIG. 3. An HTML file is hierarchically organized intohierarchical sections, each section demarcated by opening and closingtags. For example, the web page, as a whole, is described by thehighest-level section demarcated by an initial tag 404 and ending tag406. The tags generally include symbolic encodings of various HTMLattributes and additional text, not shown in FIG. 4 for the sake ofbrevity and clarity in illustration. A detailed description of the HTMLweb-page specification language can be found in any of various textbooksand on-line references, including Wikipedia. Each section of the webpage is generally specified by a lower-level tag-demarcated section,such as the section bracketed by tags 408 and 410 corresponding toadvertisement 304. Often, the content for the subsections, such asadvertisement 304, are specified by one or more additional HTML filesreferenced by a hyperlink, such as hyperlink 412, within the HTML file402 specifying the web page. These hyperlinks generally include URIs orURLs, not shown in FIG. 4, allowing the web browser to obtain the filesthrough additional HTTP-based client/server transactions.

FIG. 5 illustrates, using a control-flow-diagram-like illustration, theprocess by which a web browser renders a web page for display. In FIG.5, as in many additional figures discussed below, interaction betweentwo different entities is illustrated with the steps of a first entitylocated to the left of a central vertical line 502 and steps associatedwith a second entity located on the right of the central vertical line502. In the case shown in FIG. 5, the left-hand portion of the figureshows steps carried out by a web browser executing on a user's personalcomputer and steps on the right-hand side of the figure correspond tosteps carried out by one or more servers. In step 504, a user inputs amouse click to a displayed hyperlink on a web page, which is transmittedto, and received by, the web browser. In response, in step 506, the webbrowser directs an HTTP request for an HTML file specified by a URLassociated with the displayed hyperlink. That URL can be found in anencoding of the hyperlink within the corresponding HTLM file for thedisplayed web page. In general, access of a hyperlinked web pageinvolves a series of computational and communications activities. A webbrowser accesses, using the URL, a distributed name server (“DNSserver”) to obtain the IP address for a server that serves the HTML fileand then transmits an HTTP GET request to that server. All of theseunderlying activities are represented, in FIG. 5 and subsequentlydescribed figures, by horizontal arrows, such as horizontal arrow 508.When the server receives the HTTP GET request 510, the server uses theURL embedded in the GET request to find and return the requested HTMLfile to the requesting web browser 512 via the HTTP client/serverprotocol. The web browser receives the HTML file in step 514 and beginsrendering the file for display by generating display commands anddisplay data from the HTML directives within the HTML file. Duringrendering of the HTML file, the web browser may encounter embeddedhyperlinks, as in step 516. When the web browser encounters an embeddedhyperlink, the web browser prepares and directs an HTTP request for theHTML file described by a URL encoded in the embedded hyperlink, in step518, to a remote server which receives the request, in step 520 andreturns the requested file in step 522. The embedded hyperlinksreference files stored in either the same server from which the HTMLfile describing the web page is received or from other remote servers.In general, the display commands and displayed data generated by the webbrowser as the HTML file is processed are executed via system calls tothe operating system and other executables within the personal computerto generate the web-page image displayed to the user on the displaydevice.

Information markets to which the current application is directed maydistribute information electronically via HTTP, RTSP, and web pages, butmay also employ many other information distribution, informationrendering, and information display technologies. The distribution ofinformation electronically via HTTP, RTSP, and web pages is used in thecurrent discussion as an example of many possible informationdistribution, rendering, and display technologies on which informationmarkets can be based. Some other technologies include distribution ofbooks and magazines to eReaders and distribution of recorded music byelectronic file transfer to music-player applications.

Currently, advertisements are included along with content on web pagesby content providers, with web-page viewers having no direct controlover the advertisements that they receive. In most cases, contentproviders provide content at no cost to viewers, but are compensated foradvertising space they provide to advertisers on their web pages. Inmany cases, sophisticated content providers and advertisers maycooperate to include targeted advertising within web pages based oninformation accumulated, over time, about particular users, with theusers identified by the IP address from which requests for web pages arereceived and by other means. It is no accident that web-browser usersare commonly presented with advertisements related to goods and servicesthey have recently researched on the Internet. However, the targeting ofadvertising is generally relatively crude because both content providersand advertisers lack detailed market-segment information aboutindividual web-page readers.

In certain cases, users pay subscriptions to content providers in orderto receive content from particular web sites or otherinformation-distribution services. However, in general, information isprovided at no cost to users on the Internet in the hopes thatadvertising included in web pages will be sufficiently attractive tousers for the users to input mouse clicks to navigate through hyperlinksincluded in advertising to obtain additional information aboutadvertised products and services. These click-through events aredetectable by advertisers and the basis for many compensation schemes bywhich content providers receive revenues from advertisers.

Both subscription-based information provision and advertiser-compensatedinformation provision may represent relatively inefficient informationdistribution from the standpoint of information providers. In the caseof subscription-based information provision, it may be difficult forcontent providers to determine subscription rates in order to maximizeincome and, in general, subscription rates are commonly applied to allsubscribers and potential subscribers. In the case ofadvertiser-compensated information provision, despite efforts fortargeting advertisements, the rate of click-through events associatedwith advertisement-embedded hyperlinks may be highly variable and may besignificantly lower than could be achieved were precise targetingpossible. Moreover, there is generally a large population of Internetusers who completely disregard advertising and therefore receive thebenefits of information provided by information providers without payinganything for them.

In many additional types of markets, retailers, distributors of goodsand services, and others who seek to provide goods and services toconsumers face significant challenges in attempting to evaluateparticular potential purchasers' ability and desire to purchase theoffered goods and services. Providers of goods and services may wastesignificant time attempting to market products to those who areinsufficiently interested in the offered products to purchase them, evenat discounted prices. Providers of goods and services may also wastesignificant opportunities by failing to recognize potential consumerswho would purchase products were a suitable price offered. In manycases, sales at discounted prices may provide needed revenue and productflow, but offering discounted prices to consumers as a whole may lead tocounterintuitive loss of profits as a result of setting expectations forlower prices, causing consumers to further delay purchases, and as aresult of failing to sell products at higher prices to those consumerswilling to pay the higher prices.

To address of the above-mentioned deficiencies and inefficiencies withcurrent information provision over the Internet and by other electroniccommunications means, the current application discloses an electronicinformation market in which information providers and informationconsumers carry out information-related transactions that allowinformation providers and information consumers to make rationaldecisions and maximize the benefits they obtain by exchanginginformation and value in the information market. The techniques andapproaches to which the current application is directed may findapplication in a variety of additional types of markets, in addition tothe information market described below. Providers of goods and services,referred to as “products,” may obtain information about individualpotential consumers of the products in order to more efficient determinepricing for the products on an individual-consumer basis. Consumers mayalso benefit from individual pricing by obtaining products at pricestailored to meet their abilities to purchase and by receivingadvertisements and offers tailored to their specific needs andinterests.

FIG. 6 illustrates one implementation of the electronic informationmarket disclosed in the current application. This illustration includesrepresentations of each of the number of components that togetheroperate in order to implement the electronic information market. In manycases, although only a single component is shown in FIG. 6 forillustration clarity, the information market may contain tens, hundreds,thousands, millions or more participants and components that togethercooperate to provide for transaction-based information exchange. Itshould be noted that, by the term “participant,” the current disclosuremay refer to, at times, a human participant in the information marketand, more often, to processor-controlled systems and devices operatingon behalf of humans, corporations, and other organizations.

Three different types of information-market participants are indicatedin FIG. 6. Information consumers are referred to as “clients” or “users”and generally access information from a client computer 602 executing aweb-browser application or other such information-acquiring andinformation-rendering application or program. There are three differenttypes of information-providing participants shown in FIG. 6, includingadvertisers 604-606, content providers 608-609, and consumers whoparticipate in the market using client computers, including clientcomputer 602. Advertisers provide advertising content that is consumedby users, or clients. Content providers provide any of many differenttypes of information that can be acquired and rendered by a clientdevice, with the prototypical content encoded within web pages that areaccessed and rendered by web-browser applications running on clientcomputers. However, the electronic information market may additionallyencompass many other types of information provided through manyadditional types of electronic communications media and protocols. Inaddition to advertisers, content providers, and clients or users, theinformation market includes one or more transaction-certificateauthorities 610, one or more dispatch-service components 612, one ormore aggregator-service components 614, and one or morenegotiator-service components 616. The transaction-certificate authorityreceives and verifies information about a user and returns to the user adigitally signed transaction certificate that the user subsequentlyemploys to carry out various types of information-exchange transactions.The transaction certificate, discussed further below, uniquelyidentifies a user and includes a variety of different types ofinformation about the user that can facilitate information-exchangetransactions and individual pricing for information, in the electronicinformation market, and for products of many different kinds inadditional markets. In general, the transaction-certificate authority isa remote computational entity, such as a data center or cloud-basedvirtual data center, accessible to client computers via the Internet.Similarly, advertisers and content providers are generally discrete,remote server computers within data centers or cloud-based virtual datacenters. By contrast, the dispatch-service, aggregator-service, andnegotiator-service components 612, 614, and 616, also referred to as“dispatch components,” “aggregator components,” and “negotiatorcomponents,” may be discrete computational entities or may be executableentities included within or distributed among client computers and otherinformation-market participants. In many implementations, the dispatch,aggregator, and negotiator-components may all execute within servers ofa remote information-market data center or remote, cloud-based virtualdata center.

The dispatch-service component 612 receives browser-start-up messagesand access requests from client browsers, and dispatches communicationscorresponding to the received messages to other participants andcomponents of an information market, as described in further detailbelow. A negotiator-service component 616 negotiates with advertisersand content providers on behalf of clients in order to arrive atmutually acceptable terms for various information-exchange transactionscarried out within the information market. The aggregator-servicecomponent 614 combines advertising and content in order to produce, ingeneral, advertising integrated with content that is provided tobrowsers executing on client computers. In certain cases, the aggregatormay provide only advertising and in other cases the aggregator mayprovide only content rather than advertising integrated with content.

In general, the information market provides for various differentinformation-exchange transactions, including transactions in which usersagree to view advertising and receive a negotiated compensation forviewing the advertising and transactions in which users obtain contentfrom content providers at a mutually agreeable cost. The informationmarket additionally allows advertisers and content providers toundertake individual pricing for potential consumers based oninformation provided to the advertisers and content providers intransaction certificates. Additional types of transactions may includevarious types of accounting and billing transactions whose value isexchanged between participants of the information market to compensateparticipants for viewing advertisements and providing content. Ofcourse, the currently disclosed information market does not require thatcontent providers charge for providing content, that advertisers paycompensation to those who receive their advertisements, or that pricingis undertaken only on an individual-consumer basis. In fact, contentproviders can continue to provide content to users at no charge, shouldthey desire to, and can continue to incorporate advertisements in thecontent in return for financial compensation from advertisers.Similarly, click-through-based compensation schemes may continue to beused. The information market provides enormous flexibility, sufficientto encompass current practices. But, the information market alsoprovides for the ability for informed negotiation of advertisementplacement and content provision at the individual user level, allowingfor many different types of advertisement-targeting schemes, advertisingrevenue schemes, and content-pricing schemes.

FIG. 7 illustrates an example transaction certificate. A transactioncertificate is a data structure containing various types of informationthat is encoded in a physical electronic memory or physical data-storagedevice, such as a magnetic disk or optical disk. Transactioncertificates are transferred through electronic communications from aphysical memory or physical data-storage device of oneprocessor-controlled device to another. There are a variety of differentpossible encoding strategies by which the information contained in atransaction certificate may be encoded and stored in a physical memoryor physical device.

A transaction certificate 702 may include a variety of different typesof information that characterizes a particular user or client, includingthe client's name 704, address 705, telephone number 706, mobile-phonenumber 707, email address 708, web site 709, and other identifying andcontact information. The transaction certificate may additionallyinclude URL references 712-713 to social-network pages that describe orthat are associated with the user. The transaction certificate may alsoinclude additional types of information about the user, including thename or an identifier for the user's employer 716, an indication of theuser's position or job title 718, an indication of the user's monthly oryearly income 720, an indication of the total real assets held by theuser 722, an indication of the user's total liquid assets 724, addressof the user's second home or other non-primary-residential property 726,descriptions of the user's motor vehicles 728-730, and many additionaltypes of information that may characterize a user. The transactioncertificate authority also includes a unique user ID 732 that is analphanumeric identifier that uniquely identifies a user within theinformation market. Each transaction-certificate authority may generateunique IDs for users from a unique-ID range or subspace allocated to thetransaction-certificate authority by the information market. In certainimplementations, transaction-certificate authorities, when there aremultiple transaction-certificate authorities, may cooperate to ensureeach user is associated with a single transaction certificate at anypoint in time. In other implementations, users may acquire multipledifferent transaction certificates. The transaction certificateadditionally contains an identifier or reference for the issuingtransaction-certificate authority 734 as well as a digital signature 736that is cryptographically secure and that serves as proof that thetransaction certificate was issued by the transaction-certificateauthority identified by the transaction-certificate-authority identifier734. There are many ways to generate digital signatures, one of which isfor the transaction-certificate authority to encrypt the contents of thetransaction certificate, except for the digital signature, using aprivate key known only to the transaction-certificate authority. Thetransaction-certificate authority makes a corresponding public keyavailable to requesters, allowing requesters to decrypt the digitalsignature to verify that the decrypted contents of the digital signatureexactly match the contents of the transaction certificate. In manycases, a digital signature may be generated from a cryptographic hash ofthe contents of the transaction certificate rather than from thecontents of the transaction certificate so that the digital signaturecan be encoded in a relatively small number of bytes.

FIG. 8 illustrates an example of a user-preferences data structure thatis exchanged at certain times among participants of an electronicinformation market. As with the transaction certificate, theuser-preferences data structure is encoded, by various differentpossible encoding techniques, to digital data that is stored in physicalmemories and physical data-storage devices. The user-preference datastructures may be transferred between participants and components of theinformation market through electronic communications media. Theuser-preferences data structure 802 includes the unique identifier for auser or client 804 along with a variety of information with respect tothe user's advertising and consumption preferences These may includelists of preferred advertising subject matter 806, lists of preferredtimes of day during which the preferred advertising subject matter ismost desirable 808, preferred ratios of content to advertising for thedifferent preferred subject matter 810, a desired compensation perminute or web-page area that the user wishes to receive for viewing theadvertisements 812, a list of preferred advertisers 814, varioussubject-matter and advertiser filters 816 and 817 that may be used toreject various types of advertising, and indications 818-821 of thetypes of media player, browser, device, and operating system employed bythe user to access content. In certain implementations, there may bemultiple indications in a single user-preference data structure thatcharacterize multiple devices used by a user. In other implementations,a user may procure a specific transaction certificate for each userdevice. In yet other implementations, encryptions of the user's devicemay be separately transferred in a different type of data structure. Theuser preferences data structure may additional include various types ofinformation that characterize a user's content and content-deliverypreferences.

FIG. 9 illustrates an additional data structure that may be exchangedbetween participants and components of an information market. This datastructure may specify a particular advertisement or particular contentprovided by an advertiser or content provider. This resource datastructure, like the user-preference data structure and transactioncertificate, is digitally encoded by one of various differentdigital-encoding methods and stored in a physical memory or physicaldata-storage device, and may, in addition, be transferred betweenparticipants and components of the information market through electroniccommunications media. The resource data structure 902 includes a uniqueID 904 that identifies a particular user or client, an ID thatidentifies a particular content provider or advertiser 906, the URI fora particular information-content file or advertising file or otherinformation-containing entity 908, an indication of the subject matterof the content or advertising 910, an indication of the size of thecontent or advertising, in bytes or other data-storage units 912, andpotentially additional information that characterizes the content oradvertising 914. The resource data structure additionally contains adigital signature 916 to authenticate the resource data structure ashaving been prepared by the content provider or advertiser identified bythe ID 906. Advertisers and content providers may transmit resource datastructures to the aggregator component of an information market forsubsequent incorporation into information entities made available tousers, as discussed further below.

FIG. 10 illustrate internal components of the aggregator-servicecomponent (614 in FIG. 6) and general operational characteristics of theaggregator-service component of an information market. For each activeclient or user, the advertising service generally includes a queue ofadvertisements 1002 that stores advertisements transferred to theaggregator by advertisers. In one implementation, the queue may containURIs transferred in resource data structures by advertisers to theaggregator component. In FIG. 10, the queue is shown as a circular queuewith in 1003 and out 1004 pointers. Circular queues are commonly usedfor buffering continuously or intermittently received information. Ingeneral, the aggregator accumulates advertisements in a particular queue1002 directed to particular users and incorporates the advertisementsinto content provided by content providers to generate one or more webpages 1005 that incorporate advertising within content for transfer toand viewing by users. The aggregator may order entries within the queue,in certain implementations, based on a variety of different criteria.The entries may be ordered by time of reception, by placement bids madeby the advertisers to the aggregator, by preferences indicated by thepotential consumer, and by many other criteria. In addition, theaggregator contains one or more accounting data structures 1006 in whichthe aggregator accumulates indications of content, advertisements, andassociated compensations provided to the aggregator by advertisers andcontent providers on behalf of users. The accounting information cansubsequently be used to determine compensation owed toinformation-market participants by other information-market participantsand to arrange for transfer of value among information-marketparticipants to reconcile balances. This accounting information can beused along with recorded click-through events to implementclick-through-event-based advertising compensation schemes. Duringnormal operation, the aggregator may offset compensation owed to a userby advertisers furnishing advertisements viewed by the user andcompensation owed by the user to content providers to generate netcompensations owed to the user by advertisers and/or owed by the user tocontent providers. For example, if a user is provided one or more webpages that include ten advertisements for which the user is paid tencents per advertisement to view, and the one or more web pages includescontent that the user has agreed to purchase from a content provider forone dollar, the net charge to the user is zero. In this case, theadvertisers furnishing the advertisements owe one dollar to the contentprovider. The various compensations recorded in the accounting table ortables 1006 may be periodically processed, perhaps on a daily, weekly,or monthly basis, in order to arrange for the transfer of valuecorresponding to net accounting balances among information-marketparticipants. Value transfers involve exchange of currency or financialinstruments, through financial institutions, or may involve transfer ofother types of value, including services, information, and various typesof material goods and products. The accounting tables may also includeadditional information that can be used to generate reports that arefurnished by the information market to content providers and advertisersto facilitate subsequent transaction negotiations and otherinformation-market activities. For example, advertisers may beinterested in the ratio of the number of advertisements furnished toparticular users via the aggregator component to the number ofadvertisements actually incorporated into content accessed by the usersin order to judge a user's efficiency in consuming advertisements. Incertain implementations, click-through data may be accumulated by theaggregator in order to better inform advertisers of users' interest inthe advertisements furnished by advertisers. Content providers may alsoobtain reports to assist content providers in understanding the marketfor content provided by the content providers.

FIG. 11 illustrates an additional component of the information marketnot illustrated in FIG. 6. The information market, as shown in FIG. 12,additionally includes an accounting and billing service 1102 thatmediates accounting and billing based on the accounting informationaccumulated by the aggregator-service component 614. As with thedispatch, aggregator, and negotiator-service components, the accountingand billing service 1102 can be implemented as a distributed service,can be implemented within a single remote data center or virtual datacenter, or may be incorporated within the computing systems and devicesof various information-market participants and/or financial intuitions.The accounting and billing service 1102 is generally, like thetransaction-certificate authority (610 in FIG. 6), implemented as adistinct and separate computational entity rather than included in thesystems and devices associated with information-market participants.

The electronic information market, to which the current application isdirected, is characterized by the fact that information exchanges arenegotiated on an individual basis. Because of the negotiated nature ofinformation exchanges, users may not only be compensated for viewingadvertisements, but may furnish information to potential advertisers toallow the potential advertisers to accurately target advertising toselected market segments. Rather than paying content providers to insertadvertisements without precise and reliable targeting ability, theadvertisers are able to precisely target ads to individuals willing toview them. Furthermore, advertisers can vary the compensation they payto viewers based on various criteria. For example, when an advertiseridentifies an information-market user who may likely influence others toview the advertisement or consider purchasing the advertised goods andservices, the advertiser may be willing to pay out significantly highercompensation than in the case of a user who is unlikely to generatesecondary advertisement opportunities. As another example, advertisersmay alter advertised prices to attract potential consumers interested inpurchasing a product but unable to purchase the product at the generallyoffered price. As yet another example, compensation for viewingadvertisements may consist of price discounts with respect to standardor list pricing. Links to social-networking pages are included in thetransaction certificate, in one implementation, and advertisers mayemploy various social-networking metrics to ascertain the likelihoodthat the advertisement may be secondarily distributed by a particularuser. As another example, advertisers may be willing to pay highercompensation during the initial phases of a marketing campaign thanduring later phases of the campaign, when particular advertisements havealready reached a relatively wide audience. The flexibility ofnegotiated advertisement provision and negotiated compensation generallyallows for a wide variety of different optimization strategies to allowadvertisers to most effectively reach a desired audience at lowestpossible cost. Similarly, because content provision is also negotiated,content providers are provided flexibility in pricing and preciseness inidentifying those who access the provided content in order to optimizecontent provision through the electronic information market. As oneexample, a content provider may initially charge low or no fees to newcontent consumers in order to attract new consumers to particular websites or other content-distribution facilities. As another example,content providers may alter content provided to individuals based on theindividuals' characteristics obtained from the transaction certificateand from information sources accessible through the transactioncertificate, including social-networking pages. As yet another example,advertisers may offer individual pricing to individual consumers. Usersmay also greatly benefit from the flexibility of the informationmarketplace. Users can define parameters used during the negotiationprocess to maximize compensation they receive by agreeing to viewadvertisements in order to obtain desired content as inexpensively aspossible. Furthermore, in bargaining with content providers, users mayobtain content at lower cost, particularly when users are willing to beflexible with regard to how and when they access content.

Next, various different transactions carried out in one implementationof the information market, discussed above with reference to FIGS. 1-11,are described with reference to control-flow-like diagrams provided inFIGS. 12A-16B. It should be noted, at the onset, that thesecontrol-flow-like diagrams are intended to illustrate the effects of oneimplementation of an information market, and are not intended to providedetailed descriptions and many low-level details, including errorhandling and handling of many different types of special cases.

FIGS. 12A-B illustrate a “new session” routine called within a webbrowser when the web browser is launched on a user's computationaldevice. When the web browser is launched, an information-market browserplug-in notifies one or more dispatch components (612 in FIG. 6) of theinformation market that the web browser and web-browser user are nowactive in the information market. In step 1202, the “new session”routine is invoked by the web-browser plug-in during the start-upprocess. In this and subsequent figures, the web-browser plug-in isreferred to as the “information-market service” or the “localinformation-market service.” In step 1204, the local information-marketservice determines whether or not a valid transaction certificate isstored in local memory. When no valid transaction certificate ispresent, as determined in step 1206, then a “get certificate” routine iscalled, in step 1208. When the “get certificate” routine successfullyobtains a transaction certificate, as determined in step 1210, controlflows to step 1212. Otherwise, an error is returned to the user in step1214. In certain implementations, the routine “get certificate” may becalled again with different parameters or other types of ameliorativeactions may be taken. In step 1212, the information-market serviceobtains or updates a variety of user preferences and other userinformation through an information-collection interface. Any of variousdifferent types of information-collection interfaces may be used,including text-entry pages and other such information-entry facilities.In step 1216, the user preferences and characteristics are encoded in auser-preferences data structure, and this data structure and thetransaction certificate are combined and encoded using adispatch-component public encryption key. In this step, and in othersteps discussed below, standard public/private data-encryptiontechnologies are used, with public keys freely distributed and privatekeys held in confidence by various components and participants of theinformation market. Next, in step 1218, the information-market servicetransmits the encoded user preferences and transaction certificate toone or more dispatch components (612 in FIG. 6) of the informationmarket. This data transmission is shown in FIG. 12A by horizontal arrow1220. In step 1222, the dispatch component receives the encoded userpreferences and transaction certificate transmitted by theinformation-market service and decrypts the received encrypted message.As indicated by the disk labeled “A” 1224 in FIG. 12A and a similar disk1226 in FIG. 12B, the control-flow diagram continues in FIG. 12B withstep 1228, in which the dispatch component searches a database ofadvertisers to identify candidate advertisers for the user described bythe transaction certificate received in step 1222. This step mayconsider many of different types of information. For example, thedatabase of advertisers may list various different user characteristicsthat advertisers seek to match to characteristics of users in order forthe advertisers to pay compensation to the users for viewingadvertisements or to provide individual pricing to users, includingprice discounts. In other cases, a database may contain scripts orroutines, or links to scripts or routines, to carry out more complicatedevaluations of a user based on information contained in the user'stransaction certificate to decide whether or not an advertiser would bewilling to compensate the user for viewing the advertiser'sadvertisements. In general, advertisers often target specific marketsegments, and a user's transaction certificate is employed either by thedispatch component or by a combination of the dispatch component andadvertisers to evaluate whether the user falls within a market segmenttargeted by the advertiser. In the for-loop of steps 1230-1232, theinformation-market service encrypts and transmits the user's transactioncertificate as well as any user preferences that may apply to aparticular advertiser and transmits the transaction certificate andadditional preference information to each candidate advertiseridentified in step 1228. Similarly, this information is also provided,in step 1234, to one or more negotiator components (616 in FIG. 6) ofthe information market. The user transaction certificate is provided, instep 1236, to one or more aggregator components (614 in FIG. 6) of theinformation market. In all cases, when information is transmitted from afirst component of the information market to a second component of theinformation market, the information is encrypted using a public key ofthe second component, to which the information is transmitted.

Thus, the “new session” routine discussed above with reference to FIGS.12A-B informs various information-market components that a user is nowparticipating in the information market and alerts selected advertisersof the user's participation. As further discussed below, the informedadvertisers can then begin negotiating to provide advertisements forviewing by the user, which are collected by the aggregator component ofthe information market for subsequent provision to the user. In thisroutine, and in the routines discussed below, a first information-marketcomponent may transmit information to one or more of each particulartype of second component in the information market, depending on whetheror not the second information-market component is a centralizedcomponent, a fully distributed component, or a hybrid component.

FIGS. 13A-B illustrate a “get certificate” routine called in step 1208in FIG. 12A. In step 1302, the “get certificate” routine, referred to as“the browser feature,” below, is invoked either by the localinformation-market service, as in FIG. 12A, or by a user inputting amouse click to a browser-displayed input feature. The browser feature,in step 1304, collects information for the transaction certificate froma browser user through a browser-feature information-collectioninterface. Then, in step 1306, the browser feature encrypts the receivedinformation using the transaction-certificate authority's public key andtransmits the encrypted information to a transaction-certificateauthority (610 in FIG. 6) in step 1308. In step 1310, thetransaction-certificate authority receives the information from thebrowser feature and decrypts the encrypted information using thetransaction-certificate authority's private key. In step 1312, thetransaction-certificate authority checks the database for informationindicating a potential duplicate certificate. In this implementation,each user is allowed only a single valid transaction certificate at anygiven point in time. As discussed above, in other implementations, auser may hold a valid transaction certificate for each of the user'sdifferent processor-controlled devices that the user employs to accessthe information market and, in still other implementations, there may beother limits or constraints on transaction-certificate issuance. When apotential for a duplicate certificate is identified, as determined instep 1314, the transaction-certificate authority returns a duplicateerror in step 1316 to the browser feature which receives the duplicateerror in step 1318 and returns the duplicate error to the user, in step1320, through some type of error-display interface. Otherwise, in step1322, the transaction-certificate authority authenticates the receivedinformation. Any of many different types of authentication activitiesmay be carried out, including evaluating references to social-networkingpages, validating address, email, and telephone-number information usingany of various different types of personal-information databases orservices, and other such activities. When the received information isnot successfully authenticated, as determined in step 1324, then thetransaction-certificate authority returns an authentication error, instep 1326, which is received, in step 1328, by the browser feature,following which the browser feature returns an authentication error tothe user in step 1330. When the information is successfullyauthenticated, the transaction-certificate authority determines, in step1332, whether any additional information might be desirable and, whenso, as determined in step 1334, sends a request for more information tothe browser feature in step 1336, received by the browser feature instep 1338 with transfer of control back to step 1304 in FIG. 13A. Onceall necessary information is received, the transaction-certificateauthority, in step 1340, prepares a transaction certificate, digitallysigns the transaction certificate, and encrypts the transactioncertificate with the browser's public encryption key, in step 1342. Notethat the browser's public encryption key is generally transmitted to thetransaction-certificate authority in step 1308 of FIG. 13A.Alternatively, the transaction-certificate authority may obtain thebrowser's public encryption key from a database of browser publicencryption keys maintained by the information market. In step 1344, thetransaction-certificate authority returns a transaction certificate tothe browser, which receives the transaction certificate in step 1346 anddecrypts the certificate and stores the decrypted certificate in localmemory in step 1348. In alternative implementations, the transactioncertificate may be stored in encrypted form and only decryptedimmediately prior to each use by the browser feature.

FIGS. 14A-B illustrate an access transaction by which a browserparticipating in the information market accesses content on behalf of aninformation-market user. In step 1402, a browser processes access to aweb page or other such information access invoked by user input, such asinput of a mouse click to a displayed hyperlink, and uses various typesof data and filters to decide whether or not this access represents anegotiable new-content request. As one example, a first access to a website may represent a negotiable new-content request, but secondaryaccesses within a web site may not, when information corresponding tothe secondary accesses have already been prepared for delivery to thebrowser by one or more aggregator components (614 in FIG. 6) of theinformation market. As another example, access by the browser to a website provided by a content provider not participating in the informationmarket may clearly be deemed to not represent a negotiable new-contentrequest. When the access is not a negotiable new-content request, asdetermined in step 1404, the browser accesses information in a normalfashion, external to the information market, in step 1406. Otherwise, instep 1408, the browser prepares an access request and transmits therequest to one or more dispatch components (612 in FIG. 6) of theinformation market. The dispatch component receives the access request,in step 1410, and transmits the access request to a negotiator component(616 in FIG. 6). The negotiator component carries out a negotiation withthe corresponding content provider for access to the desired informationand, when a negotiation is successfully completed, returns a response tothe negotiator component including an aggregator URL for the content,received by the dispatch component in step 1412, and the negotiatedcompensation. A response is returned by the dispatch component to thebrowser in step 1414 that, when negotiation was successful, includes theURL for the content prepared by the aggregator component. This responseis received by the browser in step 1416. When negotiation for thecontent has succeeded, as determined in step 1418 of FIG. 14B, thebrowser accesses the content using the aggregator URL to obtain thecontent in step 1420. Otherwise, the content is accessed by normalbrowser processing in step 1406 via step 1422. Access of the aggregatorURL may involve requesting and obtaining a single HTML filecorresponding to a single web page or may involve a more complex accessin which multiple HTML files and web pages are received. The type andcomplexity of the access depends on the type of content being accessedby the web browser.

FIG. 15 illustrates a transaction carried out between a negotiatorcomponent of the information market and an advertiser. When anadvertiser receives notice that a user/browser is participating in theinformation market, the advertiser may send proposals to the negotiatorfor providing advertisements for viewing by the user. The negotiatorcomponent (616 in FIG. 6) of the information market negotiates with theadvertiser on the user's behalf and, when the negotiations aresuccessful, authorizes the advertiser to begin furnishing advertisementsto the aggregator component or components (614 in FIG. 6) for bufferingfor subsequent inclusion in content provided to the user. In step 1502,the negotiator receives a proposal from an advertiser and evaluates aproposal with respect to user preferences and other user informationstored in the user's transaction certificate. When a proposal isacceptable, as determined in step 1504, then, in step 1506, thenegotiator sends an acceptance message to the advertiser and stores anindication of the acceptance in memory. In step 1508, the advertiserreceives the acceptance message and, as a result, begins transmittingadvertisements to the aggregator component in step 1510. When an ininitial proposal is not acceptable, as determined in step 1504, thenegotiator may send a counterproposal to the advertiser in step 1512.The advertiser receives the counterproposal in step 1514 and evaluatesthe counterproposal to decide whether or not the counterproposal isacceptable. When the counterproposal is not acceptable, as determined instep 1516, the advertiser returns a rejection message, in step 1518, tothe negotiator which receives the message in step 1520 and stores anindication of the rejection in memory. Otherwise, the advertiser returnsan acceptance message, in step 1522, and then begins sendingadvertisements to the aggregator in step 1510. The acceptance message isreceived by the negotiator in step 1524 and an indication of theacceptance is stored in memory. By storing indications of acceptance andrejection of proposals, the negotiator may gain information aboutadvertiser characteristics that allow the negotiator to more effectivelynegotiate on a user's behalf for advertisements from the advertiser. Ingeneral, the negotiation primarily concerns the compensation desired bya user for viewing advertisements furnished by the advertiser, but thenegotiations may be more complex, in that different compensation levelsmay be desired for different types of advertisements, for differenttimes of the day, and based on other such parameters andcharacteristics.

FIGS. 16A-D illustrate operation of the aggregator component orcomponents of an information market. In general, the aggregator can bedescribed as an event handler, at a high level. FIG. 16A illustrates theevent handler. In step 1602, the aggregator waits for a next event. Whena next event occurs, the aggregator determines the type of event andcalls a corresponding routine for that event. When the event isreception of a dispatch message, as determined in step 1604, then theaggregator calls a “new consumer” routine in step 1606. When the eventis reception of an advertiser message, as determined in step 1608, thenthe routine “new ad” is called in step 1610. When the event is receptionof a message from a content provider, as determined in step 1612, thenthe routine “new content” is called in step 1614. Many other types ofevents may occur and may be handled by the aggregator, represented by adefault handler 1616 in FIG. 16A. The event loop continuously executeswithin one or more aggregator components of the information market.

FIG. 16B shows the routine “new consumer” called in step 1606 of FIG.16A. In step 1618, the aggregator decrypts the message received from adispatch component and extracts the unique identifier for the user aswell as additional information from the transaction certificate sent bythe dispatch component on behalf of the user. When a queue and otherdata structures have not already been set up for the user, as determinedin step 1620, then in step 1622, the aggregator sets up an advertisingqueue and other data structures for the user.

FIG. 16C shows the routine “new ad” called in step 1610 of FIG. 16A. Instep 1624, the aggregator receives a new advertisement from anadvertiser. When the advertisement queue for the user for which theadvertisement has been sent is already full, as determined in step 1626,the aggregator returns a pause message to the advertiser in step 1628.Otherwise, the advertisement referenced in the message is queued to theadvertising queue on behalf of the user, the unique identifier for whichis included in the message from the advertiser, in step 1630, and theaggregator returns an acknowledgement to the advertiser in step 1632.

FIG. 16D illustrates the routine “new content” called in step 1614 ofFIG. 16A. In step 1634, the aggregator receives a content message andURL tag from a content provider. The URL tag is generally determined bythe negotiator component or another information-market component uponsuccessful negotiation of content provision. In step 1636, theaggregator lays out one or more web pages or other information-conveyingvehicles, including space for advertisements. Then, in the for-loop ofsteps 1638-1644, the aggregator attempts to fill each space in thelaid-out content vehicle, in step 1636, with advertisements obtainedfrom the advertisement queue for a particular user. When the queue isempty, the advertising space may be otherwise filled, in step 1643.Otherwise, a de-queued advertisement is incorporated into the currentlyconsidered space in step 1642. In step 1646, the aggregator associatesthe completed web page or pages with a URL that incorporates the URL tagreceived in step 1634. In step 1648, the aggregator updates theaccounting tables obtained by the aggregator to reflect compensationowed to the user by advertisers and compensation owed by the user to thecontent provider.

The above-discussed control-flow diagrams illustrate basic functionalityof the information market. In actual implementations, many of the stepsmay involve greater complexity in implementation logic. For example, itmay be the case that a given a web page or other content-provisionvehicle accessed by a user may include content provided by two or morecontent providers, in which case a more complex negotiation may beundertaken by the information market and more complex logic may becarried out by the aggregator to incorporate advertisements and multiplecontent references into a complete content-provision vehicle. Theaccounting and billing activities undertaken by the information marketmay be carried out in any of many different ways, and may involvedthird-party financial institutions and monitoring of click-throughevents by information-market components. Additional complexities mayarise in the case that a user simultaneously or concurrently accessesthe information market through multiple user devices and in the case theinformation market is distributed across multiple dispatch, negotiator,and aggregator components.

It should be noted that, in certain cases, users may elect toexclusively view advertisements, during a period of time, forcompensation, or, in other cases, may view content withoutadvertisements by paying compensation to content providers. Theinformation market is flexible and accommodates many different types ofuse by content providers, advertisers, and users.

Although the present invention has been described in terms of particularembodiments, it is not intended that the invention be limited to theseembodiments. Modifications within the spirit of the invention will beapparent to those skilled in the art. For example, a large number ofdifferent implementations of the information market can be produced byvarying one or more of many different design and implementationparameters, including choice of browser technology, programminglanguage, operating system, modular organization, data structures,control structures, and other such parameters. As mentioned above, theinformation-market components, including the dispatch, aggregator, andnegotiator components, may be implemented in discrete, separatecomputing facilities, in certain implementations, or may be included inone or more of user, advertiser, and content-provider computingfacilities. While the above discussion focused primarily on web-browserapplications which access and render content and advertisements fordisplay to users, other types of content-accessing and content-renderingcomponents may be designed or enhanced to interface to the informationmarket. Value transactions carried out by the information market mayinvolve monetary transactions or transactions in which goods andservices are directly bartered for advertising consumption and contentconsumption. Finally, the above-described techniques may be applied tomany additional types of markets in which goods and services areexchanged, including traditional retail markets. Transactioncertificates may be supplied, in such situations, from mobile phones andother computing devices or from smart cards or other types ofinformation-transfer media.

It is appreciated that the previous description of the disclosedembodiments is provided to enable any person skilled in the art to makeor use the present disclosure. Various modifications to theseembodiments will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art, andthe generic principles defined herein may be applied to otherembodiments without departing from the spirit or scope of thedisclosure. Thus, the present disclosure is not intended to be limitedto the embodiments shown herein but is to be accorded the widest scopeconsistent with the principles and novel features disclosed herein.

1. An electronic information market system comprising: multiple computersystems, each of which has one or more processors, one or more memories,network-communications subsystems, and computer instructions, stored inone or more of the one or more memories, that control the computersystem to cooperate with other of the multiple computer systems tonegotiate on the behalf of user processor-controlled devices withadvertiser computer systems, which transmit electronically encodedadvertisements to remote computer systems and other processor-controlleddevices, to transmit electronically encoded advertisements to userprocessor-controlled devices; aggregate electronically encodedadvertisements and information received from the advertiser computersystems and from content-provider computer systems that transmitelectronically encoded information to remote computer systems and otherprocessor-controlled devices; and transmit aggregated electronicallyencoded advertisements and information to user computers.